Green Shinto - Rock powerWesterners are often drawn to the animist side of Shinto, and for those of us who look to the past before the religion was made into an emperor-centred ideology, one of the salient characteristics of early Japan is rock worship. Sacred rocks can be found across the country, and they often form the spiritual heart of ancient shrines. Some indeed are the spirit-body of the kami. Others are held by legend to be the place where a kami descended, or to have formed the original site of worship at the shrine.